


Gonna Dance (Till the Night Is Through)

by sa00harine



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Found Family, and klaus is the fashionable gay psychic, and vintage travelling circus au, animal tamer ben, can you tell he's a dumbass too, diego is a knife thrower slash escapologist, five is five, give kudos to buy klaus a decent outfit, hypnotist allison, lotta fluff, lowkey angst, luther strongman duh, not gonna lie this is bizarre and fun and I love it, so basically umbrella academy but, stubborn bitch baby boy man, vanya is my angel, very vintage showbiz-y, who is VERY soft and owns like half a zoo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-09 22:43:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18926464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sa00harine/pseuds/sa00harine
Summary: As Diego had heard so many times, Luther picked up the entire crew himself until they’d become a dysfunctional, tight-knit, utterly macabre and unbearable family that dimed off of their disfigurement.





	Gonna Dance (Till the Night Is Through)

**Author's Note:**

> Helloo! First off I'd like to say that this idea+most of the inspo came from the wonderful @lesbuchanan and their followers!! This was a blast to write and I hope you like it!

Their show tent came up to the height of the ferris wheel. Diego splayed out across the roof of his trailer, watching Ben and Luther hammering the final nails into place. Weather-beaten colors tiredly beam from the thick polyester- salmon that used to be red, denim that used to be lapis blue, and canary yellow that was the color of the sun when Diego had found his home here. 

Tossed out of foster homes for playing with knives, gave the community lifeguard a heart-attack, dropped out of school because the education system _just_ _wasn’t for him,_ Diego, at the age of twenty-seven, had run clean out of options. One of his old sweethearts, a spitfire named Eudora, who’d lent him a mattress in her beat-up apartment, urged him out of the house and out to see some circus- The _UMBRELLA ACT,_ to be clear. 

Their co-managers had taken an interest in him when he'd mingled with the troupe after the show he and Eudora saw. Diego had consulted the two of them- a broad-shouldered blond by the name of Luther, who’d opened the show, and a puny, music-savvy ex-orchestra member who’d softly introduced herself as Vanya. 

Soon after, the show acquired a new addition. 

Escapologist. The man who’d smother himself underwater in a tank with no foreseeable outlet and find a way out just before suffocation could tag him. On good nights, his ankles would be chained or his arms bound behind his back. Though, it was arguable that  _ every night _ was a good night when he didn’t die. His beginning days were filled with recurring imagery of his lifeless body, shrivelled like a raisin in water, the result of a failed escape. But the fear dissipated quickly once Diego had accidentally submerged himself for two hours. How he could drift off at the risk of drowning and stay asleep for two hours, he still didn’t know. All he knew was that he was Act Two, “Dynamite” Diego- the escape artist of wet dreams and the knife thrower who never missed a target. 

Absurdly enough, Diego’s arrival was eventually revealed to have been  predicted by their amiable, bordering on insane, psychic, Klaus.

Luther ambles up to him, holding out a hand for Diego to take and slide off of his trailer when guided by. The man, considerably stocky, smiles at him. 

“Six o’clock show tonight. Feeling alright?” 

Diego shrugs. “Getting by,” he says. Truthfully, he’s optimistic as he usually was. There was something about Luther that encouraged uncharacteristically vague and fickle comments from him. Diego and the rest of the performers chalked it up to their unspoken rivalry. 

He had come second, but Diego sometimes thought that if he’d come first, he’d be the headliner, the first act, rather than Luther. 

 

Luther. Their strongman who presented his feats of lifting barbells and anvils with ease. He took logs with attached swings and prettied-up dancers and acrobats crawling about, and carried them in circles while the audience gaped. Luther was the product of astoundingly robust luck stirred in a crockpot with herculean strength. 

That was Act One “Leading” Luther- the god who juggled people and trailed his self-made circus through the world in hope of not being so alone. 

 

Needless to say, it worked. As Diego had heard so many times, Luther picked up the entire crew himself until they’d become a dysfunctional, tight-knit, utterly macabre and  _ unbearable  _ family that dimed off of their disfigurement. 

The dancers rejected by the ballet companies and the actors screwed by favoritism became their support. Flayed out, politic-crazed, frantic, and starving journalists flocked to them in groups, begging for words from their crew. Fortunately, there was enough of them to send out a variety of different volunteers. The audience they’d attracted over the years had set in stone their favorites- the ex-cabaret singer with a raspy voice, Elvira, and their acrobatic captain with a loud voice and a louder hyperextension in his joints, Colton. Diego tended to avoid the interviews. He spent his time sharpening his knives or knocking back bottles with Klaus when he wasn’t onstage. 

Luther’s co-manager, Vanya, had come soon after Colton’s rubber-banded acrobats and in the middle of the jaded-Broadway type influx. She was from a niche orchestra group,  _ Seventh Symphony,  _ named after one of Beethoven’s works. Diego knew this because Vanya played a violin solo from the music when he did his escape routine. The soprano was intense, it spurred him every night. 

 

He’d come in most recently, only three years ago. This was his second tour. 

“Glad you’re doing okay. I heard Allison was going to go out and buy us food to have after the show.” 

Diego sputters- blithe attitude lost in favor for childlike surprise. “We’ve had pizza and canned foods and vegetables for almost a year now? What’s she planning on bringing?” 

“Well,” Allison was just walking up- hair in a half-blonde, half-brunette updo that displayed the colors in a spiralling pattern. Her eyelids were painted with purple and blue that would look otherworldly in the stagelight. “I have pasta, chicken, no seafood because Five can’t have that and no milk because Klaus insists he’s lactose intolerant and dairy messes with his  _ insight…  _ also every flavor of soda I can find, more water bottles, and all the cookies me and the montage dancers could find.”

Diego wipes at the drool that’s coated his bottom lip. 

“Where is it?” Luther had sat up too, interest spiked. 

“In the food tent for after the show,” Allison says. 

Diego whines. “We can’t have it until then?” 

“No, I’m not having the money wasted on both of your neverending appetites.” 

“That’s unfair.” Luther. 

“Unfair to the time I spent being bombarded with questions at the grocery store or unfair to the cashier who spent ten minutes ringing me up?” 

That sends them into petulant silence. 

 

Allison was their impulse control and persuasion. She drew in the crowds. She’d starred in one-time-wonder movies and had a brief but remarkable stint in film-acting. Her mother had forced her to take dance classes, as well.  So she accumulated just fine with the circus. 

 

Her act was tantalizing to their spectrum of audiences. She’d sit at a simple table, spotlighted and all-too similar to an interrogation room. Her act intimidated Diego so much that after his first time seeing the show, he’d flinched when she opened her mouth to tell him something. 

Allison would take a fluid amount of volunteers from the audience and mix in the dancers and singers from the show. The lines between the chosen people would soon draw thin as she worked her magic- hypnotizing them into engaging in addled waltzes and promenades. From the detached eye, it was funny. It was always funny to see strangers embarrasing themselves in ironic (though consented) laments and improvisation. If you thought about it though, Allison prompted her subjects into losing control of their minds and bodies. Essentially, her act was being handed the gears of the people who were willing to launch themselves into short-lived spontaneity for a laugh they didn’t know if they were going to get. Diego had bared witness to several of her most daunting ideas- sending a group of drunk damsels into spilling their secrets, stirring a dramatic fight between them, and then snapping them back into reality. The girls had no recollection of their experience. Another one was inviting the corrupt politician and smiling faux-innocently as he hoola-hooped for three minutes. This was Klaus’ favorite. Diego’s favorite was the time she’d gotten an entire clique of college kids to partner with the dancers and put on the most chaotic and entertaining number to Vanya’s violin playing he’d ever seen. 

Their adored Act Three, “The Rumor” Allison. That was her tatic- rumors. She would bat her eyelashes and let thinly sugar coated ammunition slip from her rich, vixen lipstick. 

 

“Two hours to showtime  _ chop chop chop! _ ”

Klaus saunters towards them, smoking a cigar around his cherry-red lips and using his other hand to tinker with the laces on his leather pants. 

“Is that from the dancer’s trailer?” Allison had given him a once-over with an incredulous gesture to his torso. Klaus shrugs.

Diego is unsure which eccentric garment she’s referring to- the bright pink feathery boa around his neck, the star-shaped purple pop sunglasses askew on the bridge of his nose, or the fluffy leather jacket with grey and black squares across the outside of it. 

“Lorraine gave me the boa.” 

“ _ Lorraine  _ needs the boa for the show tonight.” Allison yanks it from his neck. Klaus squabbles for it, but she tosses it to Luther, who uses his height as an advantage. Klaus shrivels. 

“I’m getting that back. It looks better on me!” 

“The boa is fine but those shoes are heinous,” Allison winces.

The shoes were clown shoes. They were large, red, and shiny. And absolutely disgusting. 

“You’re an asshole,” Klaus says matter-of-factly. “And for your information, the thrift store had them out for free. If it’s free, it’s  _ for me.”  _

Diego scoffs. “Wonder why they were free. You look like you’re wearing giant fruit on your feet.” 

“This is some damn lucky fruit then,” Klaus grumbles. He sits cross-legged at their feet, putting out the cigarette in the grass. 

Diego poorly conceals his amusement. Klaus was his confidant and probably his closest friend in the circus. Though, no matter their closeness, Diego still didn’t know much about the psychic besides what he’d seen firsthand. From what he’d heard- Luther, Five, and Vanya had refused to disclose the details of Klaus’ recruitment to him- Klaus was found on the steps of a rehab center. Whether or not he was sober was debatable. 

Nowadays he fared better, though. Diego was sure of it. If anything, he’d known that Klaus came into the show as a wreck- a drug-dependent, unnervingly hyperactive, insomniac wreck. He’d been sober in terms of drugs. He kept to alcohol because they all drank after the show was over and he smoked before the shows. As long as he was otherwise OK, it was fine by Diego to let him have his fun. 

Klaus, without preamble, promptly beings a tangent. As he’s talking, he leads them into his trailer, which was just behind the one that they’d been leaning on- Diego’s.

The front was painted with tye-dyes, with  _ PSYCHIC  _ splayed across in orange bubbly letters. Diego thought it was funny when in close vicinity to the other trailers, which were more mundane than not. 

“So none of you told me that the technical backstage guys are  _ to die for.  _ I was hanging around while they were putting together Diego’s set and running the dance in between me and Allison’s acts, and I saw this guy- blonde, blue-eyed  _ dynamite six-foot god  _ helping Lorraine and Agnes with their slips. And the best part? The guy was supremely uninterested in their flirting.” 

Allison trifles through the heap of sewn blankets on his bed, all self-made by Klaus. That was his hobby- sewing things. Diego owned a beanie and pair of gloves made by him. Never wore them, but he kept them. 

While folding a green blanket over a beige one, Allison meets his eyes. “You sure he’s not just married or taken?” 

Klaus snorts. “Oh, my name is Dave- that’s his name by the way- and I work at a famous but wildly ludicrous circus! Say hello to my wife and kids and picket-fenced house for me!” 

“Good point,” Luther says, walking out the door with a white trash bag over his shoulder. 

Diego kicks back on the hammock just outside the trailer. He can see into it- where Klaus is pacing and Allison is motherly organizing each and every inch that presents a problem, and Luther’s retreating footsteps. 

He tunes out Klaus and Allison as their chat turns into playful bicker. 

Klaus’ act confused him. The dancers dressed in frilly pink dresses would make way for an enormous platform- painted by Vanya with stunning detail to look like an ouija board.  Klaus had a lawn chair planted between the  _ YES  _ and  _ NO.  _ He would take questions from the audience and answer only in the form of spotlights shining on each letter of the board until a reply was formed. It was bone-chilling, and Diego avoided watching it. He liked to think of Klaus as his merry, amusing, fashion-savvy and deliberately dopey best friend. Not the cold performance he gave. It thrilled the audience because it established the supernatural and its significance, but it chilled Diego for the same reason. 

Klaus tricked people with his giddy atmosphere- he was happy, but not an optimist. He'd been thoroughly lawed- in and out of smalltown cells for years. His offences stretched as far as he could run his mouth- drug use, drug possession, public indecency, thievery- the list goes on. 

Act Four, "Kleptomaniac" Klaus, was a wildcard, on and off stage.

 

Luther returns, a smidgen of their ensemble around him. They’re all in various states of dress and undress- frenzied dancers in scuffed dance shoes and half in costume, acrobats stretching with a full costume but half-baked faces. 

“Rehearsal in the tent. The show’s in an hour.” 

 

Diego noses his way into the trailer, where Klaus was shovelling cereal into his mouth. Allison was tapping her feet to eight counts under her breath. This was the start of the in-between- the hazy reality of leaving the real world and descending into the fog of the show-biz that had eclipsed their lives permanently. 

 

Knowing Diego well enough, no dialogue is required. The three follow Luther. 

 

While they’re walking, Klaus matches Diego’s pace. 

“I stopped by your trailer, you forgot one of these.” The psychic holds up one of Diego’s knives. It was one of the purple ones. They were color coded. Along with his solo act, the escape, he did knife-throwing acts in between some of the other events. To make things more organized and smooth, he and Vanya color coded each of the knives with their targets. 

It made a difference, but not a huge one. Diego frequently pocketed his orange knives for his blue act or his purple ones for his red act. Maybe tonight he’ll work on that.  _ Maybe.  _

 

      Diego takes the knife, doing his best to give Klaus the  _ annoyed brother  _ look. By Klaus’ answering toothy grin, Diego guesses that he didn’t quite hit the mark. 

“I thought I locked my trailer.” 

 

Klaus cackles. “You think a lock’s gonna stop me from using your microwave?” 

“Apparently not. Is that all you were doing?” 

“Yes. No. Maybe so,” Klaus hums. He dances around Diego as they walk, doing messy turns in the sand. It flies up around the two in dusty clouds. Diego doesn’t inhale as they reach the grassy area. The tent was quite a walk from their trailers- they’d rented a large chunk of the land and Five insisted they  _ use every inch of it to distance themselves from the carnival attendees.  _

Case in point: Carnivals were loud and Five hated any unnecessary noise. 

 

“So Jackass is doing well,” Klaus says. “Was telling me about how you broke your coffee mug on the floor this morning.” 

Klaus admantly vowed that there was a ghost haunting Diego’s trailer. They’d dubbed the ghost “Jackass” after Klaus informed Diego that the spirit refused to tell him his name. Here’s a few reasons by Diego knew Klaus, despite his abilities, was fucking with him:

 

  1. This gimmick begun twenty seconds after Diego said he was scared of ghosts. Klaus had leapt out of his stool in Diego’s kitchen and pointed to the corner, where Jackass was allegedly standing.
  2. No spirit Klaus ever met before ever refused anything. Klaus just didn’t have a name ready when Diego asked. 
  3. Every event he mentioned Jackass telling him about was one Klaus was also present for. 



 

But Diego let it slide. 

They reach the tent. Diego steps inside, giving up the blue skies to get color-tinted, floppy ceilings. A complicated set piece was currently being rolled onto the stage by the tech men. Klaus yips and Diego identifies the man- Dave, who he was talking about earlier. 

Blonde, blue-eyed, tall, and talking in a chipper, gentlemanly tone to the man next to him. He lugged the painted wood like a rag over his shoulder. Damn, Klaus  _ did  _ have good taste. 

 

Klaus shoulders past him. He looks back and mouths something- a playful glint in his eyes.  _ He’s mine.  _

Diego wouldn’t have bowed so low. He mindlessly flips Klaus off as he makes his way back to Luther and Allison. 

 

The leading man was leant against the bleacher seats. Allison was sitting, going through a catalogue of their reviews and balancing a notebook of the ticket sales on her lap. 

Diego clambers up beside her. “Ticket sales?” 

Allison shrugs. “Pretty null for tonight. But we’re selling at the door tonight, so they’ll rocket fast.” 

“Good to know. How long until we’re rehearsing?” 

“Now. We’re rehearsing now,” Five interjects. “The show starts at six and it’s four-thirty.” 

As usual, Five was clad in a neat dress shirt, blazer, and trousers. If Diego saw him in the streets, he’d assume Five was some posh accountant or businessman. A small, meek, fourteen-year old businessman. Five had a knack for traveling through spaces- getting somewhere fast. Instantly. In fact, he literally disappeared and appeared before Diego’s eyes. Five had deadly seriously told them all how he was actually, physical appearance aside, a fifty-eight year old man who got fucked over by time travel. He’d gotten stuck in some eternal ground-hog day that lasted around a decade, then worked his way back through putting together equations. That was the reason why he appeared to be a teenager. 

There was a line between humoring him- therefore treating him like an adult out of fear of their lives and mulling over the details of the story and then plainly disbelieving him out of rationality; but this was a circus and they were walking that line. 

Five was a hellspawn to Diego during his first week. He persistently appeared and vanished from Diego’s whereabouts to remind him of the showtimes and nag him about getting ready. The only reason Diego hadn’t chewed him out like the child Five appeared to be was because Five was so intense that it freaked Diego out most of the time. 

Five made  _ forty-five minutes to showtime  _ sound like their lives were on the line. Jesus, it wasn’t like the world was gonna end if Diego hung around backstage for a bit too long. 

Maybe it did, they never knew with Five. If you thought you knew, then it was a trick or a trap. Five was probably the smartest besides Vanya and they all knew it. 

 

Five act was the standard magic act. Diego would throw knives for a bit and eventually Vanya, dressed in a white tuxedo, and Five, in his own slightly-dressed up version of his daywear, enter the stage. She performs magic tricks like sawing Five in half or playing violin on the trapeze while Five did stunts. Their act was mesmerizing. Five moved without fear and with astonishing ease. Vanya was able to maintain her balance while playing the most melodic music. Diego loved to watch their culmination of focus, sporadic stunts, and unbridled power behind their movements. 

Five was the most novel of their group. He stood out, namely he stood out for trying not to stand out. His frowns and shows of indifference only made everyone want to know more about him. What wasn’t interesting about a teleporting, sarcastic fourteen-year old with a devil-may-care attitude? Five had been relatively standoffish after Luther found him, rationing food inside an abandoned warehouse- Five was homeless after he’d come back from his ‘time-travel’- but Five had grown close to all of them. He was their shared younger-older brother. His biting remarks- insults, really- were only softened by comedic timing. His air of nonchalance came down to reveal the begrudgingly considerate side of him during the best of times. 

Act Five, “The Boy” Five. He was unforgettable and he owned the place in his own way. He was the young king of their deviant cartel. Or old king. Nobody really knew besides Five himself.             

 

Today, he was short-tempered. It came through his curt answer and the tightness in his jaw. 

Diego complies and gets up from the bleachers. Five took his place, examining the papers Allison was studying.  

 

Their backstage isn’t so much of a backstage as a dark tent loosely attached to the show tent. The costumes were kept in a smaller trailer linked to the dark tent. Diego had no costume changes. He just wore a slightly different leather suit than his normal one- more colorful. There were red, blue, and yellow stripes starting in the palms (that’s right, they were gloves- fingerless) and ran across his arms and to his chest. The knife belt and straps were the same three colors. 

Diego slips into the costume, unabashed to the few that weren’t currently doing their opening act- a few lingering extras flipping through newspapers or smoking cigarettes. Luther’s probably in the midst of stomping and carrying things, so he’s on next. 

His usual pre-show ritual was chugging water so he didn’t get dehydrated while trying not to die and putting bandages underneath the ankles and wrists of his suit. The handcuffs and ropes left burns. 

But Diego would save that for the actual show. He decided to just watch until he was on. 

 

Luther was holding what could suffice as a small tree- the bulk of it, between his head and shoulders. His hands rested on the back of it while his head leant on it. On top, girls in metallic dresses shook their hips and acrobats hung from the bottom- spinning around. Diego’s head spun just watching it. He had no clue how none of them got dizzy. 

It concludes. Blackout. 

 

The sound of wheels and creaking as the tank is chugged onstage. Diego doesn’t rehearse the escape, he sits next to the tank and holds his breath. The method was calming. 

He leans against the glass, throwing a thumbs up at the crowd on the bleachers. Luther is panting. Allison is checking her watch, shaken by Klaus clapping dramatically. Five is blankly staring. Ben and Vanya have also joined them, and are waving at Diego. 

Six minutes pass. His lungs feel warm. His throat tickles. He waves back. 

Their run-though passes through them and settles into their bodies- a familiar taste that always goes down different. Now they do the real preparations. 

Five truffles down from his hanging position on the trapeze, already talking. “Backstage, everyone. We start in thirty minutes. Get your costumes on, get ready, then we’ll get paid.” 

Mutters of agreement and  _ break a leg  _ follow as they all retreat to ready themselves. 

 

Diego and Ben lurk for a few moments. 

Ben was crouched beside a tiger cub. He’d named it Herman and Herman had cost them an amount of money that had Five giving Ben cold stares for a week. But, the animal did fine in their circus. He was actually kind of cute. 

“Herman, buddy, I’ve already fed you several times today. It’s time to do a show, okay?” Herman raises a fluffy paw and bats the hand Ben was subconsciously moving as he spoke. Ben  _ tsks.  _ “Don’t give me that attitude. Let’s go.” 

Diego joins Ben and waves at Herman. Ben smiles at him. 

“You ready to submerge yourself in water again?” 

Diego grins. “Always.” He pets Herman. “You ready to not get eaten by wildcats?” 

“They’d never!” Ben picks up Herman, who squeaks. The tiger was getting too big to be held- his paws knocked against Ben’s knees when Ben stood up. 

Ben didn't mind. Neither did Herman- nor any of the other animals that Ben cared for. He was steller with his job- their animal trainer. Maybe it had something to do with the deformities writhing around in his stomach, maybe not. 

It wasn’t Diego’s place to pry. 

 

Klaus was the one who’d recruited Ben. The story was interesting and Klaus recounted it often.

Their show had gone on a hiatus due to a short-term arrest on Klaus’ part for public indecency. It was when he was still hellbent on highs in the streets whenever he wasn’t with the circus. Vanya had gone out and seen the arrest first hand- Klaus had been found, barenaked with a bottle in his hand. He’d been lugged into the back of a police car and kept in police possession for thirty days. 

The same night, on the way back to the station, a lion had escaped the zoo. 

The zoo was a pitstop and Klaus had, thankfully, in hindsight, been conscious enough to survey the scene. A man, about Klaus’ age, in a dark hoodie and darker jeans, was urging the lion back into capacity. The peculiar sighting was how the lion went heeded by Ben’s gentle orders and reared against the zookeepers and standbys. 

Klaus had kept this in mind long after the case was solved and though his sentence. On his way out, where Vanya had driven to pick him up, he found Ben’s address clearly written down on a piece of paper left out on a desk- terribly unwise to leave out something valuable anywhere within Klaus’ general vicinity. 

Vanya, though still disappointed with Klaus, had followed him on his quest to recruit the animal-tamer. 

Ben wasn’t home, but they’d hunted him down in the library down the street from his house. 

Initially, Ben had been confused. He thought it was a scam. 

But sure enough, Ben joined them. 

Vanya had returned with their wacky psychic and with Ben. 

Ben was the link that fine-tuned them once and for all. He was seemingly ordinary- clean-cut, had a degree in literature from a good-mouthed college, and held a steady job. And they were so lucky he’d taken their aloof offer. Diego didn’t know what the place would be without Ben’s constant, reassuring optimism. He kept Luther on his feet, kept Diego sane, made Allison laugh, kept Klaus out of trouble, exchanged intellectual words with Five, and appealed to Vanya’s agenda by joining her and Five on the behind-the-scenes work. He drained their money with animalcare, but they didn’t mind because he let them play with said animals. 

Founder of wildcats, spiders, birds, and snakes, Act Six, “Benevolent” Ben didn’t see anything like this in his future but he wouldn’t change it for the world. 

 

Diego left to loiter backstage at the same time Ben carried Herman out of the tent, cooing under his breath. Now the previously hushed room was unbridled chaos. Diego hunched on the chair in his corner, putting the first layer of oil over the leather covering his ankles- it helped him squirm out later on. 

Around him, dancers lifted their legs over their heads and acrobats contorted into little balls. Flamboyant stagewear took the place of shedded sweatpants. The heat accumulated quickly. He was sweating by the time Luther begun to pace. 

 

Luther’s habit was pacing. He may have been their stoic strongman act, but he was far from the persona he presented onstage. Diego got nervous before shows, but he never got such supreme stagefright as Luther suffered from- blindly stumbling and sending their ensemble barreling out of his way. 

 

Allison, on the other hand, was out front, greeting the guests in her elegant purple jumpsuit. Her fame drew their publicity and welcomed the guests. Her normality lured them into a false sense of security- as if they weren’t going to walk among the eldritch performers and find the phantasms they produced following them home later that night. 

 

The cigarette smell coming from behind their central set- a giant three-dimensional frame of wood carved into the shape of an umbrella (which was painstaking to travel with, mind you) was from Klaus. He was killing time, knees drawn under his chin and on the floor with Dave. The two gathered in-between acts to sort out each other’s nerves. And, apparently fell in love doing so. 

 

Five scribbled formulas onto paper and redid his tie upwards twenty times. He’d done his warming up during their rehearsal, so he lingered near one of the half-mannequins that was in place to store their dance captain's wig for the show. Now, Five was a scholar in his own right, but his distressing attachment to the mannequin that he’d dubbed “Delores” dumbfounded them all. He sat by the table that she was often placed on for the duration of the time he wasn’t onstage. 

 

Ben stayed in the animal trailer, hovering over the wildlife to make sure they were hydrated and calm. Diego peeked in on them at one point- warmed by the sight of Herman dozing, folded over Ben’s outstretched leg while he tended to the two lions they owned, Leo and Simba. “Hula” Hullabaloo the parrot zestfully chirped and clicked from his spot on Ben’s shoulder. 

 

Vanya was in Diego’s chair when he came back. Her glossy dark hair was put back in a bun and her white tuxedo was half-on, half-off with the blazer gathered on her arms but hanging off of her shoulders. She smiles at him and beckons for him to sit. 

He does, and she cards her hands through his hair. It’s relaxing to close his eyes to the roar of the crowd and Vanya’s soft ministrations. They’re on in five.

She says the same thing she always does. “Be safe. Remember to do the signal if you need help.” 

Diego nods, being lulled into sedative anticipation. 

Vanya was onstage for all of his knife throwing stints and his escaping act. She worried about him steadfastly through every performance. They’d developed a signal, Diego would shake his head twice and kick the glass closest to Vanya, and she would pull him out. 

He didn’t know how she’d manage to watch him intently enough while she was busy playing, but it was nice to have the security. 

Vanya was known for being their violinist and instrumental manager, but that didn’t even begin to scratch everything she did for all of them. She was Luther and Five’s confidant. She helped make decisions pertaining to their business. Vanya equipped them with the backbone to their intensity- booming, resounding, soul-shattering instrumentals. She was soft in a quiet-before-the-storm way. She came onstage after all of their acts and played a self-composed track while they took their bows. She wasn’t only a performer, she was the divinity of their show. 

Diego squeezes Act Seven, “The White Violin” Vanya’s hand, as she leaves to open the show with Luther.

**Author's Note:**

> The next part is a third-person view of the show... so stay tuned for that!  
> I'd love to hear what you think of this!


End file.
